Thanks in part to a sagging share price, McDonald's now generates a dividend yield of 3.5%, which is impressive for a solid blue-chip that isn't a utility. Indeed, that yield outpaces the coupon you would get on a corporate bond issued by the fast-food chain. It also handily beats the 2.67% paid by a 10-year Treasury note and comes close to the 3.85% paid out the iShares iBoxx Investment-Grade Corporate Bond (LQD), an exchange-traded fund.

Yahoo Finance

And unlike the bond funds, McDonald's has the potential upside of any blue-chip stock, though we'll admit that the fast-food chain's upside does seem fairly limited these days.

"You have to accept volatility, but if you have an intermediate to long-term perspective you're buying McDonald's stock today with a 3.5% dividend and you're almost assured to get a dividend increase each year," adds Smith, during an interview with Yahoo Finance. "If you buy the McDonald's eight-year bond you're getting about a 2.8% yield and I guarantee you that yield is not going to change over the next eight years."

By contrast, playing the broader market doesn't seem quite as appetizing.

In a piece for The Street's website, columnist and money manager Doug Kass reiterates his long-held concern that stocks are still too expensive despite the recent downturn.

Among the many reasons he cites: Valuations are still too high, whether you're using conventional P/E ratios or the longer-term cyclically-adjusted P/E ratios made famous by Yale professor Robert Shiller.

The Street

He also argues that corporate profit margins, which are 70% above historical averages, are stretched to 70-year highs, so earnings are exposed. "The 2014 consensus forecast of $120 a share for the S&P 500 is likely too high," he adds.

Most Wall Street analysts are applauding the move, arguing that Nadella is a pragmatic engineer whose past focus on the enterprise business plays to the company's core competency. Analysts also like the fact that founder Bill Gates, in a new position as the company's technology adviser, will be spending more time thinking about the company.

TechCrunch

For example, the PC market could face materially worse returns than expected. And Microsoft's client companies could refuse to give up Windows XP, a 13-year-old operating system that the company is desperately trying to see replaced with either Windows 7 or 8.

A huge chunk of the PC market remains on Windows XP," writes Tech Crunch. "30%, to be precise. For an operating system that Microsoft wants to go dark in April, that's downright depressing. As Windows XP ages, it holds off future PC purchases and makes companies that use it less secure."

The piece also questions whether Surface, Microsoft's tablet, will catch on with customers and ever turn a profit.

Buchanan, in his artful way, writes of how other more forward-thinking companies like Apple and Google have passed Microsoft by in the past decade.

"Over the past couple of years—under Ballmer, no less—Microsoft has begun to articulate a fairly credible vision of its current ideal world for users," he writes. "It has failed, however, to flesh out that vision enough to convince people to abandon their perfectly comfortable, increasingly Apple- or Google-centric existences on their phones and in the cloud."